Jane Birkin, the English singer, actor, and Francophile canonized for her spitfire Sixties style, died on Sunday, July 16 at the age of 76, according to a report from Le Parisien. The news comes after Birkin was forced to cancel a handful of concerts in May due to health concerns, and less than two years after Birkin suffered a minor stroke. She is survived by two daughters.
Birkin’s later body of work included politically-charged songs and saw her appointed OBE in 2001 for services to acting and Anglo-French cultural relations. But her fame first inflated after she appeared nude in Michelangelo Antonioni’s cult 1966 film Blow-Up. Provocatively performing vocals on Serge Gainsbourg’s 1969 duet “Je t’aime… moi non plus” also served as an important catalyst for her six-decade-strong singing career.
Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin in Paris, 1969. Photo: Getty Images
The scandalous number one hit—which featured Birkin’s erotic breathing in verse originally written for Brigitte Bardot—was banned by the BBC and condemned by the Vatican. “We never thought for a moment that the song would become such a symbol of freedom—all over the world,” Birkin told Vogue France in 2018. “People listened to it in secret, from Spain to Argentina.” Birkin and Gainsbourg continued to collaborate until his death in 1991.
Releasing over 20 albums and gracing 65 films including La Piscine (1969) and Death on the Nile (1978), Birkin—who lived most of her life in France—received the French Ordre National du Mérite in 2004 and 2015. Her first solo album Di Doo Dah was released in 1973, and in 2017, aged 71, came Birkin/Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique—Gainsbourg songs set to Nobuyuki Nakajima’s orchestra. She toured the tunes from Calais to Carnegie Hall, New York.